US confirms it has killed Ahmed Godane, co-founder of al-Shabab

Helene Cooper

Newport, Wales: The Pentagon has announced that American airstrikes against al-Shabab, the al-Qaeda-linked militant network in Somalia, have succeeded in killing the group's leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, one of the most wanted men in Africa.

"We have confirmed that Ahmed Godane, the co-founder of al-Shabab, has been killed," Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said. He called Godane's death "a major symbolic and operational loss" to al-Shabab.

Speaking at a news conference after the NATO summit in Wales, President Barack Obama drew a direct link between the killing of Godane - who turned a poor, obscure local militant group into one of the most fearsome al-Qaeda franchises in the world - and Obama's plans for the leaders of the Islamic State. The president vowed to "hunt" down Islamic State leaders "the same way" the United States had with Godane.

Military officials had waited several days to confirm that Godane was killed in one of the two strikes, on an encampment and on a vehicle south of Mogadishu, the Somali capital. The strikes were carried out by Special Operations forces using manned and unmanned aircraft, and they were undertaken, Pentagon officials said, based on intelligence that Godane was at the encampment.

The jets dropped a number of Hellfire missiles and precision bombs on the encampment, and Pentagon officials said they believed that everyone there was killed. But initially they were not sure Godane was there, and were wary of declaring victory only to have him emerge later, alive. Pentagon and intelligence officials have since been monitoring phone conversations and other intelligence to verify his death.

There was an internal debate, administration officials said, among intelligence and defence officials both in the United States and Britain over the evidence that Godane was dead. Administration officials said they wrestled with conflicting assessments.

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"The bar for proof of death went way up," one US official said.

A senior US defence official said: "Everybody understood how important it was to get this right, especially given who he was. This was about being careful and deliberate."

Obama administration officials appeared eager to use Godane's killing as a direct warning to the Islamic State and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and several officials pointedly echoed the president's words linking the strikes to how the United States planned to treat extremist groups in general.

Godane, thought to be about 40 years old, had been one of the most wanted figures in Africa, widely believed to have orchestrated countless attacks on civilians, including the massacre of dozens of shoppers at a mall in Nairobi, Kenya, last year. He has presided over a reign of fear and violence inside Somalia for several years, organising the stoning of teenage girls and crude public amputations, all part of an effort to return Somalia to al-Shabab's vision of strict Islamic rule.

During Somalia's famine in 2011, when more than 250,000 people died, Godane gave the orders to block food supplies from reaching starving people. His masked fighters even diverted rivers from famished farmers.

Analysts cautioned that al-Shabaab's remaining leaders may retaliate, and said that the first to feel that retaliation may be Kenya, the scene of previous al-Shabab attacks. Another big question, they said, was whether al-Shabaab, now that Godane was gone, would be more willing to allow unimpeded international humanitarian access to areas of southern Somalia that were facing rising famine conditions.